Marcello Caetano and the Portuguese New State

by Francisco Martinho

2018 · Liverpool University Press

Prime Minister Marcello Caetano was the successor of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Considered the second most important figure of the Portuguese dictatorship (the Estado Novo regime, 1933-1974), Caetano has generated considerable disagreement amongst scholars with regard to his persona and politics; some consider him more authoritarian than his predecessor, others more liberal. After providing background on his childhood and entry to university, the author explains his growing activism in the Integralismo Lusitano and in the Catholic Church; his monarchist and nationalist ideology. Caetano's decision to support the Salazar Regime coincided with publications in the mainstream media on corporatism, colonialism, European politics and the relationship between Brazil and Portugal. His role in the office of General Secretary of Mocidade Portuguesa (MP), an organization of Portuguese youth similar to the fascist youth organizations in Italy or Germany, was at odds with his neutrality policy in the Second World War. The leadership of Uniao Nacional (the single party of the regime) and the presidency of the Camara Corportiva (a parliament for corporative interests) led to national recognition at a time when the Portuguese regime had to reform its colonial policy. His tensions with other notables of Salazarism resulted in his political demotion and devotion toward the University in the 1960s. As Rector of Lisbon University he supported universities' autonomy, dividing public opinion. Caetano's Presidency (beginning in September 1968) reflected the tense relationship between the government and the liberal wing on the colonial crisis. Ultimately this led to the final crisis of the New State regime; the fragmentation of the armed forces; and the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974. During his exile in Brazil between 1974 and 1980 Caetano maintained correspondence with his Portuguese friends. These correspondences, introduced and explained by Francisco Martinho, are of exceptional importance in understanding Portugal's contemporary political history.

Revista de la Universidad

by Universidad Central (Tegucigalpa, Francisco Morazán, Honduras), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras

1912

Includes music (Honduras national hymn, etc.)

Strangers Within

by Francisco Bethencourt

2026 · Princeton University Press

A comprehensive study of the New Christian elite of Jewish origin—prominent traders, merchants, bankers and men of letters—between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries In Strangers Within, Francisco Bethencourt provides the first comprehensive history of New Christians, the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in late medieval Spain and Portugal. Bethencourt estimates that there were around 260,000 New Christians by 1500—more than half of Iberia’s urban population. The majority stayed in Iberia but a significant number moved throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, coastal Asia and the New World. They established Sephardic communities in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Amsterdam, Hamburg and London. Bethencourt focuses on the elite of bankers, financiers and merchants from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries and the crucial role of this group in global trade and financial services. He analyses their impact on religion (for example, Teresa de Ávila), legal and political thought (Las Casas), science (Amatus Lusitanus), philosophy (Spinoza) and literature (Enríquez Gomez). Drawing on groundbreaking research in eighteen archives and library manuscript departments in six different countries, Bethencourt argues that the liminal position in which the New Christians found themselves explains their rise, economic prowess and cultural innovation. The New Christians created the first coherent legal case against the discrimination of a minority singled out for systematic judicial inquiry. Cumulative inquisitorial prosecution, coupled with structural changes in international trade, led to their decline and disappearance as a recognizable ethnicity by the mid-eighteenth century. Strangers Within tells an epic story of persecution, resistance and the making of Iberia through the oppression of one of the most powerful minorities in world history. Packed with genealogical information about families, their intercontinental networks, their power and their suffering, it is a landmark study.